Office documents appear with an orange/yellow box in front of them. They won't open

Anonymous
2021-12-15T15:12:22+00:00

I recently upgraded to Windows 11 pro. I reviewing my locally stored documents, several of them have an altered ICON with what looks like a file storage box to the left of the standard application ICON. None of these files will open by double-clicking. I chatted with MS support this morning and the agent couldn't figure it out either. Fortunately, most of these documents are also on OneDrive, but I have >100 with this issue and it will take time to find and restore a working copy.

Has anyone seen this?

Thanks,

Tom

[Moved from Word / For business / Windows]

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Diane Poremsky MVP 17,531 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-12-20T17:02:53+00:00

    if you drive isn't large enough, yes. It will also cause sync problems if you have more than 500,000 items to sync. In that case, either use selective sync (sync only the folders you use) or only keep the important files synced offline - leave the others as online files and tolerate the ugly icon.

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  2. Charles Kenyon 170.9K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2021-12-16T13:04:47+00:00

    Doug:

    Thanks for your note. Unfortunately, since the files won't actually open, I cannot attach them (only an image of them). Fortunately, I do have them on OneDrive, so I'm systematically matching file names/extensions and downloading them onto my desktop.

    I was hoping someone on the MS Office team would recognize this image and comment on same.

    Tom

    Image

    If they are on OneDrive, you should be able to post or email a view link.

    Why a sample file is important for troubleshooting. How to do it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-12-16T12:40:20+00:00

    It's possible there may be other file types that exhibit similar characteristics, but I have yet to come across one like mine. I just have a lot of downloading to do to get local documents from OneDrive. Thankfully, they are all there. It's just very time consuming.

    Thanks again for your reply.

    Tom

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-12-15T18:28:11+00:00

    I don't recognize that icon.

    .

    The icon did not exactly match any that showed up in an image search for "Word Icon". I only found a couple approximate matches, but one was on a Mac site, none on windows.

    The closest I've found is this one on a chinese site

    .

    I also found another similar, but not identical on a Mac question forum.

    The yellow blob looks like maybe a file box. Maybe with a key slot on the front ... ?

    .

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-12-15T16:42:14+00:00

    Hello Tom,

    Sorry for the inconvenience caused at your end.

    From the icon you shared, I tried to search to understand the meaning of the icon but I couldn't find any reference or related article explaining the icon. Since you mentioned the problem happened after upgrading to Windows 11 Pro, I would like to know whether this problem happens to only Word documents or all files? In addition, as you have already contacted the support, can you please ticket number and sample Word document via Private Message? Here is the link to access private message.

    Best Regards,

    Chitrahaas

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